Pricing Prints from EPSON 9880

[Scotty Graham]

I just bought an EPSON 9880 for my small photography business. For most projects, I will be printing on either Velvet Fine Art or premium Luster paper. Does anyone know what the total (ink, paper, etc.) per sq. Cm cost of printing on these papers amounts to? I am trying to work out my pricing, but don't know where to start.

[BobSmith]

There are so many variables that are unique to your situation that numbers you'll find floating around the internet will be meaningless for you. You need to track your ink/paper usage for a while using the printers log functions. Then apply the kind of logic shown in the series of articles by Mark Segal on LuminousLanscape. His original article on figuring costs on an Epson 4000 helped me a lot. I've built spreadsheets similar to his for my 9600 and 9800. I plan on a four year life for the printer. I figure estimated service costs at about what Epson charges for an extended warranty per year. You have to guesstimate what sort of total volume of printing you're doing... how much waste you typically have... and so forth. The more you use the printer, the more accurately you can gauge these things. My 9600 is still going strong at over five years old and I've spent next to nothing on it for service. So my actual costs are slightly lower than originally planned... and getting lower with each day that it keeps printing well. But I'm glad I based my sales costs on more conservative estimates of actual cost. Here's the Luminous Lanscape articles:

Epson 3800 costs

Epson 4000 costs

Bob Smith

[David_Buzzard]

You have to be careful about getting into the mindset that says you're a print lab, instead of a photographer. You're not selling a computer printout, you're selling one of your images. Most photographers I know would sell an 8x10 for between $15.00 and $30.00, and that's probably at least 10 times the print cost. If you're only making a few dollars per print, you're barely going to be able to cover the equipment costs, let alone make it worth your time to do the printing.

David Buzzard's Technical Blog

[Scotty Graham]

Bob and David, thanks so much for your input. I will read the Luminous Landscape articles you provided, Bob...and I am sure it will help.

David, I will be using the printer for my own work as well as printing other's work. For the time being, I will only print what I want to print for others...mostly friends and other photographers I know in the area. It is for these "friends" that I need to know what to charge for printing their work. I read on another thread that most charge around 15 to 18 dollars per square foot depending on paper used. So, I converted square feet to square centimeters, and then converted dollars into Indonesian Rupiah, and figured I need to charge about 200 Rupiah per square cm...which amounts to about 40 some dollars for a 16x20 inch print...does this sound in the ball park for what a photographer would pay for a nice print? Would that pretty much cover my costs plus profit (asking this BEFORE I read the LL articles)? Cheers, Scotty

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